Factorio Forums

Hello. I was trying to play with refining but without smelting. Is that possible?

My goal was to play with something involving crushing the raw ore to get stone and metal ore. Refining does that. Saph ore -> crushed saph ore and crushed stone. Next step is sorting and getting iron ore. However, with refining by itself, there's nothing to do with the iron ore. I added smelting, which adds the melt/ingot/plate chain. So that works. However, that's more than I wanted.

Is there a way to use refining without smelting?

I tried it and it seems to work fine! Iron ore can be crushed into Iron Pebbles. Iron Pebbles can be smelted into Iron Plates. Either by themselves or with Iron Nugget / Iron Slag.

Oh thanks. I'll try that. I didn't realize iron ore could be crushed. I didn't see that in the factoriopedia or think to try it.

KiwiHawk wrote: Tue Mar 10, 2026 5:02 am I tried it and it seems to work fine! Iron ore can be crushed into Iron Pebbles. Iron Pebbles can be smelted into Iron Plates. Either by themselves or with Iron Nugget / Iron Slag.

It was because I had bob's intermediates on. If I undo that, I see the pebbles you're talking about. With Bob's intermediates and Bob's metals, I don't see a way to make plates other than just crushed saph -> iron plate. Am I missing something?

No, you're not missing anything. There are so many different combinations of mods it is almost impossible to support them all. You've hit on a mod combination that isn't currently supposed I'm sorry. I can add it to the to do list.

For now I recommend you either remove Bob's Metals, Chemicals, and Intermediates mod and Bob's Ores mod. Or add Angel's Smelting mod.